Wisconsin Golfer Nov-Dec 2009 : Page 43

JOE MELOY Leading MSOE men to victory for 32 years J oe Meloy came to his job as men’s golf coach at Milwaukee School of Engineering in 1977 through a rather informal process. Meloy, a competitive golfer at the time, had been working in the counseling services department at the college for over a year when the athletic director told Meloy he wanted to start a golf team. Meloy won the Milwaukee District Golf Association Match Play Championship that year, and two years earlier he had finished runner-up to Archie Dadian at the first-ever Wisconsin State Golf Association Match Play Championship. So, naturally, the athletic director thought that made Meloy a perfect candidate for the job. “At that point, I could beat everybody at MSOE, so he said, ‘Why don’t you be the coach?’” Meloy, now 58, said. And he has been ever since. In his 32 years of coaching golf, Meloy’s Raiders have won 12 Northern Athletics Conference championships – more than any other MSOE sport – and have never finished outside the top half of the conference standings. In spring of this year, MSOE went to the Division III Men’s Golf Championship, the first national championship for any MSOE team. “I enjoy working with this population – 18- to 24-year-olds – as they develop and change,” Meloy said. “We want 24-year- olds to be different than 18-year-olds, right? We hope they become different, in a good way. When you work in counseling all day, it’s nice to be able to work with students in a different way. Golf is a great sport for that.” Today, Meloy, who lives in Wauwatosa with his wife Katie – they have four grown children – remains counseling services director at MSOE. He is a member at Brown Deer Park GC in Milwaukee and has a 7 handicap. He still plays some tournament golf but admits he can’t compete like he used to. Still, he said, he “thinks about golf all the time.” — B.L. TRIG SOLBERG Groceries and so much more U ntil he opened his own grocery store in 1971, Trig Solberg had virtually no experience in the food industry. A graduate of UW-Oshkosh who grew up in the small commu- nity of Marion, about 40 miles west of Green Bay, Solberg decid- ed after business school and a stint in the Army that the food industry “would be great.” He had never before worked in a grocery store, but he started a training program in Milwaukee and quickly became a store manager. “It’s a great business,” said Solberg, 65. “I always had a lot of respect for anybody in the business. It’s a lot of hard work.” In 1971, the opportunity became available for Solberg and his wife Tula to buy a store in Land O’ Lakes. Thirty-eight years later, the Solbergs own five Trig’s Supermarkets – in Minocqua, where they’ve lived since 1974, Eagle River, Rhinelander, Wausau and Stevens Point – which are a part of the larger T.A. Solberg Co., Inc. T.A. Solberg Co. also is involved in commercial real estate ven- tures, and it is the fixed-base operator of an airport in the Minocqua area. Solberg himself began flying when he was in the Army, and he took up the hobby again in 1985. “We just kept looking for opportunities as they came along, and we were able to seize those opportunities, and it’s been a good run,” NOVEMBER/DECEMBER 2 0 09 said Solberg, who retired four years ago from day-to-day operations. Solberg and his wife have been members at Minocqua CC since the 1980s, and he’s been president of the club since the late ’90s. In Scottsdale, Ariz., where they live seven months of the year, they’re members at Desert Mountain. — B.L. WISCONSIN GOLFER l 43 BECKY LAPLANTE PAUL ROBERTS PHOTO, MSOE